The views published here are of an ecosocialist nature and from the broad red, green and black political spectrum. The opinions expressed are the personal opinions of the writers and are not necessarily the view of any political parties or groupings that they belong to. Please feel free to comment on the posts here. If you would like to contact us directly, you can email us at mike.shaughnessy@btinternet.com. Follow the blog on Twitter @MikeShaugh

Wednesday, 28 November 2018

The 24th session of the Conference of the
Parties (COP 24) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),
runs from 2 to 14 December, in Katowice in Poland. The conference is expected
to finalise the rules for the implementation of the Paris Agreement on climate
change, made at COP 21 in 2015, to reduce carbon emissions to keep global
temperatures below a 1.5C rise above pre-industrial levels.

The actions required of nations to meet the
commitments of COP 21 are not binding, and rely far too heavily on techno
fixes, most of which do not yet exist in largescale. Some of the targets handed to
participating countries are also massaged, to make them easier to hit, and investment
by rich countries to help poorer countries adjust to renewable energy sources,
has not been fully met.

The United States, of course, under President Trump, has
now withdrawn from the Paris Agreement, and is making cuts to climate science
research and expanding the use of coal, which the burning of emits the most carbon of
any fossil fuel. Reuters reported earlier this month that
President's Trump team will "set up a side-event promoting fossil
fuels" at the conference. So, all in all, even before the conference
starts, it is very difficult to have any optimism that serious progress will be
made in Katowice.

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere reached
405 parts per million (ppm) in 2017, a level not seen in 3-5 million years. We
need to be below 350 ppm, to keep within the COP 21 target, of not rising above 1.5C
of pre-industrial levels.

All the scientific evidence points to urgent
and wide ranging action needing to be taken to reduce CO2 emissions
drastically. But as the name gives away, this is the 24th time that
politicians from around the world have met in an effort reduce carbon
emissions, but still haven’t taken enough action to make the kind of impact
needed.

The problem is, that burning fossil fuels to
provide the energy for our economic system of productivism, is what drives
economic growth, and therefore provides wealth, is not compatible with reaching
climate change goals. Yes, we should be moving to renewable sources of energy
much faster than we are, but if growth keeps rising, as it must within the
logic of the system, it is unlikely to ever be enough.

We need a great transformation of our societies
and global economy, to use less resources, and to focus away from increasing
GDP, if we are to have a realistic chance of stopping catastrophic climate
change. The modest goals of COP 21 which this conference is meant put into
action, falls way short of what needs to be done.

About 20,000 people from 190 countries
will take part in the event, including politicians, representatives of
non-governmental organizations, scientific community and business sector.

The United
Nations has also created a "People's Seat" for the public to
"virtually sit" and share their views alongside government leaders at
the climate talks. To join the effort, tag your thoughts with hashtag
#TakeYourSeat on social media.

This is your chance to put pressure on
delegates, and help to save the planet.

In particular, it focused on how we can free our
imaginations from the grip of capitalist realism
(the idea that capitalism is the only option for organising society), picturing
possible future worlds and the role that technology will play in them, while
keeping our imagined worlds grounded in social and ecological realities. For
example, not forgetting that we are living on a planet with limited natural
resources or that we have to consider how to make these imagined futures real.

Although initially a tongue in cheek provocation,
Fully Automated Luxury Communism (FALC) has morphed into a serious proposition
of how technology and automation could be used to provide for everyone’s needs
and free people from the drudgery of wage labour. Bastani’s piece attempts to
counter some of the ecological critiques of the idea, arguing that FALC can be
green.

Instead of trying to halt the progress of
technological development, and reduce energy consumption, Aaron argues that we
should ride the technological horse to move beyond scarcity, proposing a kind
of accelerationism where technology is rapidly advanced in order to bring about
radical social change.

In “Accelerationism.. and Degrowth? The Left’s Strange
Bedfellows”, Aaron Vansintjan looks at accelerationist ideas like FALC and
compares them to ‘degrowth’, evaluating the similarities and differences
between the two frameworks. Degrowth is a movement that has emerged from
environmentalism and alternative economics and is focused on theorising and
creating non-growth based economies and societies.

Although accelerationism and degrowth are apparently
opposed, Vansinjtan finds some shared ideas, including their recognition of the
need for deep, systemic change, their calls for democratisation of technology
and their rejection of ‘work’ (or at least the idea that work is inherently
good).

The key differences centre around accelerationism’s focus
on reappropriating technology to achieve a resource-unlimited society, versus
degrowth’s aim of limiting the development of certain forms of technology and
staying within resource constraints. Degrowth also seeks to slow the metabolism
of society, whereas accelerationism aims to increase the pace of social change.
Ultimately, while supportive of accelerationism’s inspiring vision, Vansinjtan
finds it seriously lacking in dealing with ecological critiques.

Rut Elliot Blomqvist examines three different visions
of possible future worlds and the role that technology plays in them. ‘Pulling
the Magic Lever’ is a reference to how technology is used to answer social or
ecological problems without explaining how it will do so: you simply ‘pull the
magic lever’ of technology and hey presto, it’s all solved.

It’s a running theme in all three of the imagined
futures Blomqvist chooses to analyse. The first is in The World We Made, a
novel by environmentalist Jonathon Porrit, then The Venus Project, a technology
based political proposition, and finally Fully Automated Luxury Communism. In
their analysis, Blomqvist uses a World Systems Theory approach to evaluate the
ideas, critiquing the story of modernisation by framing it around colonialism.

The World We Made is based on Design Fiction, where
fiction inspires possibilities of new designs. It sees the human species in
general as the villain responsible for destroying the environment. In the
novel’s fantasy scenario, however, humans manage to turn things around and start
to use technology and various existing world institutions for the common good.

As Elliot points out, this book flags up an important
discussion around the idea of the ‘anthropocene’ (a proposed name for a new
human-affected geological epoch), which may support the view that the human
species in general is the problem, rather than certain humans or, say, a capitalist
growth-based economy. They also describe the book’s tendency towards
technological optimism: it presents technology as providing the answers,
without explaining how, and ignores the socio-cultural-political reasons for
current ecological destruction.

The Venus Project is found to be even further along
the techno-optimist spectrum and again ignores how its proposed technological
utopia might be brought into existence. As well as highlighting its
fetishisation of the scientific process, Elliot explains how The Venus Project
often engenders conspiracy theories, a number of which are dangerously close to
anti-Semitism.

Continuing the trend, FALC is found to involve similar
techno-utopianism, where the working classes seize the means of production and
use automation to create a world of plenty. Elliot points to a blind spot, as
FALC doesn’t consider the limits of post-industrialism beyond the western
world. Elliot describes how all three rely heavily on ‘pulling the magic
lever’. While they show imagination, they are limited by the fossil-fuelled
mentality they seek to criticise.

In our discussion at Not the Anarchist Bookfair, we
asked participants to discuss two questions:

What role does technology play in our ecologically
sustainable future, and how do we get there?

and

How can we move beyond the techno-optimist versus
primitivist dichotomy? (I.e. beyondviewing technology as either the solution to or source of all our
problems).

The questions were discussed in pairs, in small groups
and then with everyone participating, and led to a broad discussion of the
various themes raised. Some key points that came out included:

The importance of considering the social power
necessary to make futures, and how human agency is often missing in visions of
techno utopias.

The need to change who makes technology, how it is
produced and the inherent politics of technologies.

The need to highlight and develop technology’s
potential within the ecological movement, including within degrowth
discussions.

The need to positively promote ecological future
visions, and how to counter environmentalism’s ‘hair shirt’ image.

Considering whether we should assume that technologies
will inevitably be developed, and so ride the tech bandwagon, or try to
intervene and prevent or hinder certain developments.

Thinking about if/how we can change the basis on which
automation takes places and is implemented. E.g. is non-capitalist automation
possible, and if so, how could it be made non-capitalist?

Thinking about ways of bringing ecological and
technologically based visions of the future back together.

A number of participants were keen to continue
discussions and we are considering further forums to hold related future
discussions. Corporate Watch is currently working on a technology project, if
you are interested in knowing more or collaborating on future work, please
email contact@corporatewatch.org.

Friday, 23 November 2018

Following my involvement, on Saturday 17 November, in
Extinction Rebellion’s very successful Rebellion Day 1 in London, friends have
said I should feel proud of what I did.‘Yes’, I was one of over 6000 climate protectors who, peacefully,
blocked 5 of London’s central bridges for most of that day - my allocated one
was Lambeth Bridge:

The scene on Lambeth Bridge, Saturday 17 November

And, ‘Yes’, because of my actions, I was one of the 85
who were arrested for ‘willful obstruction of a highway’:

After 2 hours in Barking and Dagenham police station,
having initially been told I would be detained overnight, I was later
‘released, without bail, pending further investigations’.

From guilt to
shame

However, I have to say that, of the 2 main feelings
I’ve had about that Rebellion Day, ‘pride’ is most definitely NOT one of them.
During the day itself, the main feeling was a combined one of exhilaration and
hope.

Exhilaration, because so many people were prepared,
peacefully, to break the law in order to protect the planet, and all those
species currently living on it. And
hope, that this Extinction Rebellion movement will quickly grow into an
overwhelming force which will succeed in at last pushing the UK government to
protect its citizens by doing all that is needed to achieve a zero-carbon
economy over the next 10-15 years.

But, travelling back to Cumbria on the Sunday
afterwards - the last train to Penrith on the Saturday had left 30 minutes
before I was released from custody - an
equally strong feeling began increasingly to take hold: guilt. Profound guilt.
Though, as I’m now putting into the public domain, for the first time, the
reasons why I feel so guilty, then that feeling now becomes one of shame - as
my failings are no longer known only to me.

Essentially, I am deeply ashamed of how little - in
just over 50 years of political activism - I have done to protect the planet
and, consequently, our children’s and grandchildren’s generations.

Because for most of those 50 years - as well as the
usual attractions and distractions - I was involved in campaigns that had
nothing to do with the environment. Beginning with becoming a supporter of CND,
I got successively involved in the campaigns against the Vietnam War and
Apartheid South Africa; countering far right and fascist groups; as well as
supporting the Bennite movement within the Labour Party.

Yet my first general political awareness was actually
closely connected to the environment and how big corporations were despoiling
it. In 1963, I read extracts from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring:

This was at a time when her warnings were increasingly
becoming visible - and invisible - in rural Norfolk, where I grew up. Visible,
as regards the number of small birds which could be found dead by the sides of
fields: invisible, by the gradual reduction in the numbers of owls and hawks.

Knowing, but
not acknowledging

This failure was not because I had no knowledge of the
growing environmental problems - or had lost my very early interest in
wildlife. Various nuggets of information concerning the environment came to my
attention, even whilst I was engaged with other, more overtly, political
movements and campaigns.

However, for whatever reasons, the various but
isolated facts concerning the emerging environmental crisis were largely pushed
to the back of my mind. Even though, some 4 years ago, I’d read Elizabeth
Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction.

All this environmental ‘knowledge’ was like some increasingly
disturbing background music that I just wasn’t properly engaging with. I knew
various bits of ‘stuff’ about the environment but - crucially - just wasn’t
acknowledging it.

As Stan Cohen pointed out in States of Denial, knowing
how bad something is, is one thing; but, once you’ve acknowledged something is
bad, then you have to make one of two choices. Either you say: ‘I know it’s
bad, but I can’t/won’t do anything about it’ - and you ignore it and cross to
the other side of the road. Or, you say ‘It is bad, and I must try to do
something about it’.

Too little,
too late?

It wasn’t until over 3 years ago that, as I was
reading Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything, I began to fully acknowledge the
state we’re now in - and where, if we don’t take serious action soon, we’re
heading.

Because, as I read her book, I thought: “If only half
of this is true, then - if we don’t act now - the world my grandchildren will
inhabit will be truly awful.”

Thus it was mainly Naomi Klein’s book which prompted
me, in 2016, to do nvda training with Greenpeace, in order to become an
environmental activist. This summer, for instance, I was part of the Greenpeace
actions against Barclays (over their funding of new tar sands pipelines in
North America) and VW (over air pollution and their continued production of
diesel vehicles).

Then, 2 years ago, I read Ian Angus’ Facing the
Anthropocene - and thought: “Never mind our grandchildren, the planet is going
to be really horrendous for our children - even though my generation will probably
ok.”

It was that which prompted me to become increasingly
involved - eventually by organising the Green Mondays - in the anti-fracking
campaign at Preston New Road, in Lancashire.

Now, of course, as this summer’s unprecedented global
heatwave and, most recently of all, the catastrophic wildfires in California
have shown, even my generation - which has done so much to cause, and so little
to prevent this climate crisis - is also vulnerable to the increasingly
frequent and destructive extreme ‘weather’ events resulting from global
warming.

So, “No”, I don’t feel proud of my small part in
Rebellion Day 1. Nor will I feel pride in anything else I may do in trying to
prevent catastrophic Climate Breakdown. What I will feel, to my dying day, will
be shame. Shame that I have failed our daughters and grandchildren, and their
generations - and all the wildlife that currently still lives on this
vulnerable planet.

However, I do try to follow Antonio Gramsci’s dictum:
“Pessimism of the intellect, but optimism of the will.” Even though I
increasingly fear we may have left it too late - and that the powerful dirty
energy corporations will block the changes that are needed - there ARE definite
signs of hope. The IPCC says we have 12 years in which to make the drastic
changes that are necessary to get global warming to 1.5C or less.

Plus Kate Raworth’s brilliant book, Doughnut Economics
- she has been one of our Green Monday speakers at Preston New Road - provides
an intelligent and inspiring roadmap of what needs to be done:

And, finally, Extinction Rebellion seems to be the
organisation and movement that we need right now - and that could well be what
finally pushes the UK’s government to act in the interests of the 99%.

As an Extinction Rebellion spokesperson has said:

“Peaceful civil disobedience has a long, proud and
successful history in bringing about positive and necessary change - in the UK,
and in other countries, such as India and the US.”

Allan Todd is
a member of Allerdale & Copeland Green Party, an anti-fracking activist and
a Green Left supporter

Wednesday, 21 November 2018

The newly elected President elect of Brazil, who takes
office in January, the far right Jair Bolsonaro, dubbed
the ‘Trump of the tropics,’ has appointed Ernesto Araújo, as the county’s foreign
minister, in a move that looks ominous for efforts to tackle climate change.
Brazil is home to probably the largest area of rain forest in the world.
Bolsonaro, has supported a weakening
of protections for the Amazon, the richest area of biodiversity in
the world. Forests will be felled and the land turned into savannah, for use
for agribusiness, mining and building construction.

So, Araújo’s belief
that climate change is all a Marxist plot, fits part of
a piece, similar to Donald Trump’ claims that climate change is a ‘hoax’
perpetrated by China to hobble the US economically. China can hardly be
accurately described as "Marxist,’ or even left-wing, especially these
days, but you can see the lazy and nationalistic thinking that Trump is trying
push. It is a thinly veiled attempt to open up the environment to further
capitalist exploitation and economic growth.

Back to Araújo, though. Writing
on his blog he says “The left has sequestered the environmental
cause and perverted it to the point of paroxysm over the last 20 years with the
ideology of climate change, climate change.”

“This dogma has been used to justify increasing the
regulatory power of states over the economy and the power of international
institutions on the nation states and their populations, as well as to stifle
economic growth in democratic capitalist countries and to promote the growth of
China.”

Quite why Araújo seems to think that he is qualified to
pronounce on these matters, he is not a climate scientist, or a scientist of
any description; he studied linguistics and literature at university, and was
trained as a diplomat at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is a mystery. The
vast majority of climate scientists do not think that man-made climate change
is some sort of conspiracy. This is just right-wing rhetoric from Araújo,or if
you like, fake news.

Some countries in South America have seen the rise of
a form of ecosocialism, particularly in Bolivia and Venezuela, but again I
don’t think you can call this Marxist, in any accurate use of the term. Perhaps,
it is just a short hand expression to describe left-wing politics and those who
practice it, to some extent or another, and to try and smear such governments
with a term that is deemed to be politically toxic.

The British right-wing media routinely call the UK
Labour party leadership ‘Marxist,’ which is clearly not the case, as in reality
it is pretty mainstream social democratic, and not even as left-wing as Labour
was in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Accuracy is not their aim though. Scaring the
voters with this claptrap is the intention.

All ecosocialists do think that our ecological
problems, including climate change, are rooted in the capitalism’s propensity
for accumulation and infinite economic growth on a finite planet, and some
might be more accurately described as eco-Marxist. James Bellamy Foster et al
at Monthly Review
are an example of this. Other ecosocialists, and I include myself in this, are
more loosely Marxist, and Michel
Lowy is a prominent example of this type of thinking.

Capitalism which really only got going during the
industrial revolution in the nineteenth century, and this was only made
possible by burning coal, to create steam power, to run the machines that
increased productivity, and so profits, for the capitalist class. It is no
coincidence that global temperatures began to rise at this point, accelerating
in the twentieth century, so that temperatures are now around 1C higher today,
and rising.

The denial of man-made climate change, funded by
fossil fuel corporations, but also by other capitalist interests, is clearly an
attempt to throw up a smokescreen, if you will forgive the analogy, so that
business as usual can carry on. All perfectly rational for capitalists, given
the potential that action on climate change has for stopping these corporations
from making money.

Some ‘green’ capitalists of course, spy a new
opportunity for making money, with a move to providing renewable energy, solar,
wind, wave etc and they promote carbon trading schemes. As though the market
which caused the problem, can somehow solve it.

Renewable energy would still use
up precious resources, and probably doesn’t have the capacity to keep up with
the veracious and increasing appetite of the system for energy input, to drive
economic growth exponentially.

The really inconvenient truth, to borrow Al Gore’s
term, and his rather modest proposals to solve climate change, is that if we
don’t ditch capitalism, humanity faces a massive climate disaster.

Saturday, 17 November 2018

We live under an economic system which
encourages consumption on an industrial scale and the consequences of climate
change will be endured by future generations. What can we as activists do to
affect change here in Scotland? Pete Cannell and Brian Parkin write ahead of
this Saturday’s Just
Transitions conference in Edinburgh about the steps we need
to be taking…

We face an
existential threat. Unless there’s a rapid transition to a low/no carbon
economy there will be catastrophic climate change.The recent UN Climate report underlined how little time we have.
In years to come, our children and grand children may ask why, when the danger was clear, there was no mass movement to drive the change that’s required.

The UN
report, like government policies around the world, assumes the market will
adapt to meet carbon reduction targets. However, growth in solar and wind
energy production is taking place alongside a massive expansion in the use of
coal. It’s now certain if we rely on market forces, driven as they are by the
maximisation of profit, the targets will not be met.

The level of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, already higher than it has been for 10
million years will continue to grow and average temperatures will continue to
rise.

But it’s also
clear if we drop the reliance on the market it’s possible to make the
transition to a low carbon economy in a way that will mitigate the future
effects of climate change and provide immediate benefits for most of the
world’s population. The Campaign Against Climate Change has developed a costed blueprint for
transition at a UK level and the notion of a Just Transition is gaining
traction around the world.

Today, a one-day
conference in Edinburgh
will look at how we can take the urgent steps needed for a Just Transition in
Scotland. We start with some real advantages and some major challenges.
Scotland as a ‘region’ of the UK is a distinct geo-political entity. It has a
significantly higher proportion of its adult workforce in industrial
employment.

Core
industrial sectors such as shipbuilding, heavy mechanical (and electrical)
engineering and construction have retained a ‘critical mass’ and skill content
of their workforces and have been able to keep pace with world class
technological developments. Long-term involvement in North Sea oil and gas has
developed the most advanced marine engineering and process systems base in the
world.

This is a
major technological asset with massive spin-off and diversification potential.
Scotland has by far the greatest share of the UK’s potential wave and tidal stream
renewable energy resources (about 75%) as well as about half of the useable
onshore and offshore wind.

It’s
important that energy policy, the creation of a state run energy company and
the creation of a green investment bank are on the Scottish Government agenda.
However, the initial proposals for these essential components of a strategy for
transition fall far short of the scale and ambition that’s required.

There also
seems to be little recognition of a looming energy crisis. In terms of electrical
capacity and distribution, Scotland is rapidly slipping from its
pre-electricity privatisation situation (1989) of a 50% over-capacity with
interconnector ‘exports’ to England and Wales and Northern Ireland, to one of
sharp capacity decline and a possible import dependency by 2025.

ScotE3, the
organisers of the conference argue that to build the momentum required for a
Just Transition a full and democratic debate is needed to tackle hard political
questions. Climate change in the abstract is terrifying. But recognition of the
threat can’t be confined to committed environmental activists.

If you’re
scared and feel powerless then it’s very unlikely you will join their ranks.
Indeed anger at inequality and fear for the future is precisely the terrain on
which the alt right is flourishing.

The
relatively small-scale initiatives to tackle climate change that are currently
in place or planned will neither be effective nor will they inspire confidence.
However, large scale investment that guarantees job security (and paid
retraining if required) for engineering workers in the construction and defence
sectors as the switch is made to climate jobs would be hugely popular in these
sectors which are rife with rotten agency staffing.

A programme
of home insulation for all would stop the illness and anxiety caused by the
high levels of fuel poverty that exist across Scotland but disproportionately
impact old and poorer people in rural areas.

These are big
steps and necessary steps.At the
conference we’ll see film from REEL News showing how working class communities
in the US are organising for a Just Transition and there will be speakers from
Campaign Against Climate Change, the Campaign Against the Arms Trade and the
defence and construction sectors.

However, the
most important part of the conference will involve thinking about how we win
the case for urgent and large-scale action. The manifesto or action plan
produced will be shared across the labour movement and community groups as an
open document for discussion and amendment.

Thursday, 15 November 2018

There will be
a direct action protest in central London on Saturday 17 November, from 10am to
3pm, organised by the campaign group Extinction Rebellion. Originally,
protesters were to meet in Parliament Square, but the latest
from their Facebook page asks people to congregate on and around these London
bridges straddling the Thames; Southwark, Blackfriars, Waterloo, Westminster
and Lambeth.

Saturday’s
demonstration will be the culmination of non-violent direct action protests
this week, which saw protesters gluing
themselves to gates outside Downing Street on Wednesday, 27 people were
arrested. Protesters then moved onto the Department for Environment, Food &
Rural Affairs, where a wall was spray painted with the message: "Climate
emergency. Frack off. Climate breakdown equals starvation."

This move
comes out of a despair with normal politics and politicians, who have failed
utterly to get to grips in any meaningful way, with man-made climate change and
other environmental crises. Year on year for the last five years, the planet
has got increasingly warmer, Arctic icecaps are melting, wild fires rage from
the Arctic circle to Australia, and hurricanes are more frequent and more
forceful than previously.

The IPCC
report last month says we at best we have 12 years to mend our ways if we
are to avoid catastrophic climate change, and governments’ including in the UK
do nothing, or worse, exacerbate the problem with fracking and airport
expansions. This is why people are taking direct action and risking being
arrested, to try and get the politicians to take the earth’s sustainability
seriously.

Non-violent
direct action has a proud history in the UK and around the world, the
Suffragettes, Gandhi and the civil rights protests in the southern States of
the US. All of which led to changes in the longer run. It is with this history
and spirit in mind that Extinction Rebellion have organised their campaign.

I share the
campaigners despair, no tinkering around the edges of current environmental
policies will get us to where we need to be, so I fully support these protests
and wish that I was as brave as these people. I don’t fancy getting arrested, I
could well lose my job, if I did.

So, I hope that my efforts in support of the
demonstrators, which only amounts to that of a ‘keyboard warrior’ will, in some
way, help to bring about change.

System change,
not climate change. Solidarity with Extinction Rebellion.

Tuesday, 13 November 2018

A McDonald’s
straw holds the potential to change your perception on the current state of
global warming. A single, 5 inch plastic straw.

Starting my
second year of university was very daunting, which it is for a lot of people as
not only are you there to get a degree that holds no promise of leading to a
career, but also forming new friendships is difficult especially with people
you are forced to live with. Thankfully, this year I managed to find a group of
people who want to have a good time at university and get their work done,
which are my kind of people. During a heat wave a few weeks ago we had a day
out in the sun, getting some work done and eating a lot of food. Plenty of
sandwiches and crisps. Walking back from the field, we picked up some fast food
because why not.

I threw my
burger wrapper and chips away into a bin but kept the straw just to play with
while I walked back with my friends back towards the flat. Having something to
play with has always been normal behaviour for me as I’ve been described as
“very fiddly”, which probably isn’t the worst thing I’ve been called in life.
After I’d chewed the straw to ruins I blew it out of my mouth and watched it
fall to the ground, joining the empty crisps packets and used coffee cups
littered all over the street. It’s quite rare for me to litter because I am
rationally afraid of being fined hundreds of pounds that I know I won’t be able
to pay, nonetheless I did it anyway and thought little of it because it was
just one straw.

Something about seeing my straw joining the masses of rubbish
that accumulated just 10 feet from nearby bins made me realise that I couldn’t
have been the only person right then to have done that very same thing. Maybe
it was the sun finally being out and enjoying the start of summer me see all
the rubbish around, but that straw helped me see a bigger picture. A
revelation, if you will.

I asked my
friends why they thought that in 2018 there wasn’t a unanimous agreed upon law
by world leaders to make positive strides in improving the environment, and why
no one is held accountable when considerable damage is done to environment
during wartime or oil spillage disasters and the like. One my friends, a
Sociology student, and the oldest out of all of us,said that in some traditional perspectives, damage to the environment isn’t considered to be in the same category as crime
between people, as plants and ecosystems aren’t harmed in the same way that
humans are.

As argued by the group, this way of thinking is very outdated as to
hurt the environment is only harming human life in the long run. A tweet I’d
seen earlier that week by Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said that planet
Earth will ‘survive anything we throw at it. But Life on Earth will not’
(Twitter, 2018) and as apocalyptic as that sounds, I think it is important that
even on an individual basis people need to take better care of this planet.

The Environmental Consciousness

My friend
also told us about a sociologist called Giddens who presented a paradox in
human nature towards the issue of global warming. The consequences of global
warming will not take effect immediately and so people today may not see it as
an issue that needs to be given immediate attention. However, this way of
thinking will lead to the inevitable future where it will be too late to right
the wrongs of the past.

Seeing all of this rubbish flutter around the city
centre triggered images of mountains of rubbish that I’d never seen with my own
eyes to race through my mind, striking me on a level I didn’t think was
possible. Suddenly my environmental consciousness kicked into overdrive and I
realised how easy it was to add to the damage to the environment, and think
little of the consequences as you are doing it. Thinking of the thousands of
plastic straws that were improperly recycled by the millions and millions of
fast food customers every week, made me realise how important and immediate the
issue of “fixing” the environment is.

The Generational Gap

Over the last
few months in South Yorkshire, there has been a rapid increase of trees being
cut down as part of a large operation to fix the roads and pavement across the
entire county. In the process, hundreds of old trees are to be cut down and the
saplings being planted to replace these old trees aren’t sufficient enough to
adequately replace the adult trees that are being cut down. In some cases these
small saplings have been reportedly vandalised and may take anywhere between
10-15 years to reach adulthood.

In February,
I had the opportunity of filming a protest event outside of Sheffield’s Trades
and Labour building where members of the Labour party were meeting. Labour
controls Sheffield City Council. One of the protesters was a fourteen year old
boy who, despite his age, saw the same paradox that Giddens theorised about and
very passionately believed that the older politicians will have to live with
the consequences of this operation, far shorter than himself and people his age
would have to.

Seeing such fierce advocacy for change in someone so young was
an odd sight to see in person yet I was reassured in knowing that he wasn’t
alone. There are plenty of intelligent young people around the world, who are
frustrated with how the world is and want to set things right for their
generation and future ones. Alas, there are plenty of people in older
generations who dismiss young people as being “snowflakes”, easily offended and
angry for no reason. A truly inaccurate title that is becoming attached to
young people.

I think as a
general consensus for the common human, the attention we pay to our environmental
consciousness is quite low on the list of things to worry about in life. The
little things we could be doing on a daily basis to improve the environment
around us are often dismissed because we have to go to work, to pay for rent
and constantly fix our sleeping patterns, because a new show came out on
Netflix. I follow various zero-waste Reddit and Instagram pages to find the
latest tips on how to up cycle the things around me that might go to waste, but
I seldom put these tips into practise.

Finding reassurance in knowing that I am
doing my part to contribute is often at the bottom of my ever-growing list of
things to-do. Similar to many controversial issues in the world, this mentality
of “Surely I can’t change things, I’m just one person” is often what divides
entire communities from ever being able to come together and make great change
in the world. This same attitude is why 35% of registered voters didn’t show up
to the ballots in the 2010 UK general election (BBC News, 2018).

Tried and Tested Mentalities

Growing up I
noticed this mentality strongly imbedded in people within my family. My uncle
had a very clear idea about everyone in the world doing the right thing and
giving their best effort to keep the your conscious clear, whereas my mom had a
similar mind state to many other people of only caring for those within the
immediate family. It wasn’t a disheartening thing to constantly hear that
individual action couldn’t lead to considerable change throughout the world, because I would read about people like MLK and Malcolm X who lead great
movements and spearheaded change throughout history.

My uncle’s
belief in individual action leading to significant change was so great that it
compelled him to join the army, and growing up around a time when people in my
family were finally starting to figure out what they wanted to do with their
lives, helped me shape my own understanding of the world.

I believed that it was
everybody’s role in society to do their bit for the sake of providing a balance
in society, ensuring the world ran smoothly. It wasn’t until I developed a
great sceptics mind whilst studying sociology at high school, where I started
to realise that not everybody in society has intentions to go out into the
world and spread peace and positivity. Some people just don’t conform to
society as utilitarian as some of us would hope.

Moral Obligations to Society

Something I
wrote at the end of a very long essay in my last sociology essay during
A-levels went something along the lines of “No one is obligated to give
anything back to society despite everyone living in it. But if we all stopped
believing in these obligations that we give ourselves, then society falls
apart”. As intellectual as I thought I was being in my exam, I think I was
finally realising that everybody has intentions in the world, but not all of
them are good, and not everyone has the goal of spreading peace throughout the
world.

Anyone willing to risk their lives for something they believe is right
is truly commendable, but even as a child I didn’t understand that if your own
people back home aren’t upholding society then what is everyone fighting for?
Are these obligations to society as important as we are told they are? We have
to at least believe in leaving the world better than we found it, for the sake
of admitting that we did our best to better the world to future generations.

Where We Go From Here

Taking into
consideration how little my groups’ few bags worth of litter weighs in compared
to the amounts dumped into landfills across the world, it all adds to the
upsettingly long list of cases where the responsibility of government bodies
and communities to protect each other and the environment from this scale of
environmental harm is completely disregarded. Like Neil deGrasse Tyson said,
the Earth will be fine no matter what we do to each other.

Yet somehow it seems
very likely that humans will bring about the fall of the human race. The growing
laissez-faire attitude towards this level of negligence when it comes to taking
care of mother nature would result in ruining beautiful wildlife that are
continuing to die at increasing rates, some we will even see become extinct
within our lifetime. It would mean shorting life expectancies for future
generations that we will never get to meet, and it will ensure the deaths of key
ecosystems that provide so much life and value to the rare, perfect conditions
for allowing us to live on Earth.

Not only do world leaders need to make active
efforts in communication and cooperation to ensure we are metaphorically
putting the right foot forward as a human race, but also swift action needs to
be taken to ensure that future generations can benefit from whatever we leave
behind. Change on a global scale could mean a great deal when combined with the
efforts of individuals, of others willing to match their enthusiasm and
desperate to pass that activism onto future generations.

‘A man has
made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants
shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit’ – David Elton
Trueblood (Trueblood, 1951).